Ask Slashdot: Remote Server Support and Monitoring Solution?

New submitter Crizzam writes I have about 500 clients which have my servers installed in their data centers as a hosted solution for time & attendance (employee attendance / vacation / etc). I want to actively monitor all the client servers from my desktop, so know when a server failure has occurred. I am thinking I need to trap SNMP data and collect it in a dashboard. I'd also like to have each client connect to my server via HTTP tunnel using something like OpenVPN. In this way I maintain a site-site tunnel open so if I need to access my server remotely, I can. Any suggestions as to the technology stack I should put together to pull off this task? I was looking at Zabbix / Nagios for SNMP monitoring and OpenVPN for the other part. What else should I include? How does one put together a good remote monitoring / access solution that clients can live with and will still allow me to offer great proactive service to my servers located on-site?

Comments

Re:Reverse-SSH tunnel phone-home from remote devic

[BitZtream]

Just because you're unfamiliar with networking administration doesn't mean this needs to blown up into "hire a network guy". That's just ignorance and

As someone who's been a network admin for a few years, I'm fairly confident in my statements. Do you do even minor surgery on yourself if you're not a surgeon? If you come to slashdot to ask how to do something for your business, you already fucked up and the only valid responses you should be getting from slashdot are help on finding someone who can help you. If he asked 'how do I find someone, like a consultant for a short term project, like this' that would be one thing. He didn't, he came here expecting a solution which illustrates his complete lack of understanding of the problem, THAT IS WHY he needs to hire a network guy.

He is, by definition, ignorant, which is why he is asking for help ... clearly you are as well as your choice of words indicates. I suggest you learn what the word ignorant means before you brandish it about like an insult as you just end up insulting yourself through your own ignorance.

(I suspect) trying to make yourself sound important on an anonymous message board.

I have no need to make myself sound important, I certainly don't need your approval ... and if you bother to google for my nick, you'll find its not even a little difficult to link to a real name, address, and everything else. I'm not in the least bit anonymous. People have been able to recognize that nick and its association with me for 20+ years. On the other hand ... your post ... is from ... anonymous coward. Do you know the meaning of the word ironic?

As my granddaddy used to say, if you don't know what you're talking about, it's best to not open your mouth and prove it. So no need to apologize, just take the advice and consider it a lesson learned. Best of luck.

Your grand daddy said that too you a lot, didn't he? Did you ever wonder WHY he said it too you so much? Maybe he was trying to get some sort of point across to you ... Go look in the mirror and repeat those words until you get the point of them and who he was talking about. Hint: Its the guy in the mirror.

You're an absolutely shitty troll. You just suck at it. Nothing you've said did anything other than show how stupid YOU are, not me.